Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 11:49 PM 4/25/06 -0500, Jim Nichols wrote: >Marc, > >In addition to the German rocket scientists, the US also got a number of >German aerodynamicists who were working at the cutting edge of wind tunnel >design. I was fortunate, as a young USAF officer, and later, as a >civilian, >to work with a number of them. Thanks, Jim. German aviation engineers and atomic scientists and rocket designers saw no future for themselves in a Germany which was then expected to be divided back into its historic Lander and which was widely intended to have a pastoral future. Optical scientists and camera engineers could see a place for themselves in a future Germany but not the designers of cutting-edge warbirds, so, yes, those guys emigrated, Willi Messerschmidt went to Spain for a whle and I believe that Kurt Tank went to India briefly, but those guys were the exceptions who could draw in the big bucks. One amusing and photo-related note. After the end of the Second World War, the Spanish acquired both a large number of Heinkel He-111 bombers and Bayerisches Flugsugwerke Bf-109 fighters, but also the licensing rights to make more, and they did so. (The Czechs also produced a number of Bf-109's though I do not believe that they ever paid Willi any royalties for his work.) The Spanish were unable to obtain parts for the Daimler DB600 engine or to obtain the rights to make it, and Hispano-Suiza was not able to meet their needs, so the Spanish mated both bodies with, of all things, Merlin engines, and these aircraft remained in service into the later 1960's. They became a staple of Postwar US WWII war movies and computer simulations of the He-111's appear in unrealistic masses in the recent film, THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE -- a HEAVY Luftwaffe bombardment of London would have consisted of 300 aircraft or less arriving over a six-hour time span, but that movie has a huge mass of aircraft flying in rigid formation and arriving in a snap-crackle-pop timing of the sort which would have led an ops officer to have had apoplexy. But these will be the pictures we view in all future WWII war films: Heinkel bombers and Messerschmidt figherers with Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, and historical accuracy be damned. And so much, by the by, for the Focke-Wulf and Junkers and Arado aircraft as well. It is a shame that the Czechoslovaks, Israelis, or Spanish failed to adopt them. Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!